Lisa Spier

"In today’s world, we see productivity as the ultimate goal to strive for, yet this has not made us any happier as human beings. What we lack in our daily lives is inactivity.

In his book 'Vita contemplativa', Byung-Chul Han discusses inactivity and how important it is for us. “True happiness is to be found in the aimless and the useless, in taking detours, in the excessive, the superfluous, the beautiful forms and gestures that serve no purpose and lead nowhere.” (Han 2023). Taking pleasure purely for ourselves, without an end goal. This is the value of daydreaming.

I’ve always been interested in daydreaming; even when I was young, it was seen as part of my identity. My family nicknamed me “the dreamer” because I was always daydreaming and thus had my head in the clouds. With this work, I want to invite the viewer to step into this daydream—not just to look at it, but to experience it as well. The people who enter the space briefly become part of this daydream. Without them, the work is static and incomplete. Daydreaming cannot exist without people, and neither can the work. The interaction with this work has no ultimate goal. The only thing the viewer takes away from it is the pleasure of play and the futility. This is also what I hope people can find in daydreaming: the permission to daydream, just for themselves."